Here’s how you can manage your acute foot pain:
- Reduce aggravating activities
- Try taping as a pain management strategy
- Learn exercises you can do to help reduce pain and swelling
What might be causing your foot pain?
If you have pain on the inside of your ankle and down under the arch of your foot, it may be foot pain caused by tibialis posterior tendinopathy, also called PTTD (posterior tibialis tendon dysfunction).
I always recommend to get a diagnosis by a physiotherapist because foot pain can be many different injuries, including bone stress injuries, which need a very different approach to treating – please get an assessment!
The acute phase of rehab is usually framed around providing a healing environment for the injury by:
Reducing aggravating activities
- With tib post tendinopathy, the painful activities are usually walking too long, standing too long or running
- How to implement: if walking is painful, make sure to wear shoes and reduce extra walking that isn’t necesary during the day, if running is painful then reduce it to run:walk intervals or switch to a crosstraining activity like cycling or swimming for the next 1-2 weeks
Pain Management Strategies
- Utilizing strategies that reduce pain by even 5% can make a huge difference when pain is occuring daily
- Low dye taping can be a very effective strategy that you can do yourself, my advice is to only use it when necessary (such as longer walks or working) and to wean off of using it daily so as not to become reliant on it
Exercises for Acute Foot Pain
The goal of the acute phase of rehab is not to completely stop doing all activities, we want to keep you moving while providing a healing environment.
Important considerations in the acute phase of rehab include:
- monitoring pain and swelling – neither should be increasing during this phase
- targeting the injured area specifically, while continuing training of the rest of the body and joints, especially maintaining full body strength and aerobic capacity
- taking note of aggravating activities and pain fluctuations
Acute pain is often intense, it could involve swelling or inflammation, and likely has stopped you from doing your normal activities – use this as a guide to help your pain.
Try these physiotherapist-chosen acute rehab exercises for tib post rehab
Get into your regular training sooner than just ‘wait and see’ by monitoring and managing pain with progressive rehab exercises.
Wall sit with calf raises
Isometric push with barbell
Forefoot heel hover lunge
Single leg balance
Choosing exercises is always based on the individual in front of me when I am their physiotherapist. These exercises I provide here are general ideas and should be tailored to each person performing them and their injury.
For a full exercise rehabilitation program you can check out the Tib Post Tendon injury rehab program. I wrote this for athletes and runners who are experiencing this foot pain. You will go through phased rehab exercises with criteria-based progressions.
